Four Catholic Relief Service staff members on their way to a training session in Nairobi, Kenya, were among the passengers aboard an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed moments after takeoff in the east African nation. The accident March 10 claimed the lives of 157 people on board, many of them from humanitarian agencies.

Auxiliary Bishop Neil Tiedemann, C.P., pastor of St. Matthias, Ridgewood and Msgr. Kieran Harrington, vicar for communications for the Diocese of Brooklyn, led pilgrims from Brooklyn and Queens to the Holy Land for a Lenten pilgrimage, March 7-15.

Cardinal George Pell, 77, was sentenced to six years in prison March 13, just over two weeks after a Melbourne court allowed the publication of news that he had been found guilty of sexually abusing two boys.

Catholic Church leaders in Venezuela say a peaceful transfer of power from embattled President Nicolas Maduro to a transitional government, probably led by National Assembly president Juan Guaido, is the best hope for the crisis-wracked country.

At a time of mounting anti-Christian persecution around the world, Pope Francis celebrated the memory Sunday of nine seminarians killed during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s by revolutionary miners who had occupied the city of Oviedo.